'Mortal Engines' to reach India before US

Peter Jacksons "Mortal Engines" will release in India on December 7, a week before its US release.

Universal Pictures International India is bringing the film to India. It will release in English, Hindi, Tamil and Telugu, read a statement to IANS.

Jackson is on board as a producer and screenwriter, re-teaming with the "Hobbit" screenwriters with Fran Walsh and Philippa Boyens in "Mortal Engines", which is set in a steampunk world where entire cities have been mounted on wheels and prey on one another. It depicts a world of predator cities existing thousands of years after current civilization has been destroyed by a cataclysmic event.

It's Jackson's first feature project since the completion of the "Hobbit" trilogy in 2014.

Directed by Christian Rivers, "Mortal Engines" is based on Philip Reeve's book by the same name. The film stars Hugo Weaving, Hera Hilmar, Robert Sheehan, Jihae, Ronan Raftery, Leila George, Patrick Malahide and Stephen Lang.

Talking about how "Mortal Engines" came to the A-Team, Boyens said: "There were a lot of projects coming at us after the 'Lord of the Rings' films, and a lot of them were fantasy projects.

"I got an email from Pete, asking me to take a read of this book. He didn't tell me too much about it, because he wanted my honest opinion. And from the very first sentence of the book I was hooked. I kept reading, hoping it was going to make me fall in love with the characters, hoping it would have an amazing ending, and it did, all along the way. So I wrote Pete back and said, 'Hell, yeah. This is an extraordinary story."

The idea of moving cities was so fascinating to Jackson.

He said: "Society has rebuilt a semblance of what it used to be, except the cities are now actually moving."

He loved the concept of cities on wheels devouring each other, and the tale's narrative and emotional elements of love, compassion, vengeance and liberation.

"You are always looking for stories with humanity. 'Mortal Engines' has that," Jackson said.

--IANS

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